SIP-based p2p?
p2pnet.net News:- US internet provider Earthlink is offering up SIPshare, an SIP-based application which, it says, demonstrates the viability of SIP (Session Initiation Protocol) for p2p in "other than the well-known voice and video" cases.
"We chose file sharing to illustrate how SIP can be used to build an alternate P2P application, but file sharing itself is not the point," says Earthlink.
"EarthLink SIPshare demonstrates that it is conceivable that voice over IP, where voice is just content of a different form, itself can be implemented using SIP in a fully standards-based P2P network. In other words, the effect of Skype, but with one important difference: using standards-based protocols, as EarthLink SIPshare does for content sharing."
Emphasising that SIPshare isn’t an EarthLink product but is, rather, a proof-of-concept, cross-platform Java app, Earthlink says it features:
- Peer discovery (Given a few bootstrap hosts, peers learn of other peers using standard SIP messages).
- Fully distributed content search (Searches for content are distributed across the network from one peer to another, on behalf of a third peer).
- File Transfer (As a proof-of-concept application, share documents, photos, and other files with peers on the network via standard SIP messaging, and completed using a simple UDP-based file transfer protocol).
Network assembly, search, and download are all established using standard SIP messaging.
Will EarthLink SIPshare work behind NAT?
No, says Earthlink. "All messaging, including the file transfer protocol, are based on UDP. If you want to extend EarthLink SIPshare by incorporating something like STUN for NAT traversal, by all means do so."
Does it cost anything?
SIPshare is free under a BSD-style license.
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See:-
SIPshare – SIP Beyond Voice and Video, Earthlink
SIP – SIP: Session Initiation Protocol, The Internet Society, 2002
BSD – EarthLink SIPshare Redistribution
